


The once and future king

by little_ogre



Category: Burnt (2015)
Genre: Bisexual Male Character, Falling In Love, First Time, Friends to Lovers, M/M, Not as much food as there should be, Quite slow, Slow Burn, previous Helene/Adam
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-13
Updated: 2018-09-26
Packaged: 2019-07-11 18:17:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 16,849
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15977792
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/little_ogre/pseuds/little_ogre
Summary: Tony had thought that the third star and that stupid kiss would mean closure and instead everything he feels for Adam just gets worse.In the aftermath of the three Michelin stars life goes on. Adam falls in love and tries to reconcile his past with his future and also tries to figure out a classy way to say: hey remember that time I offered you breakfast instead of falling in love with you and now I've had a bit of a think about it and maybe I do love you after all, what do you say?





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> For the purpose of this fic I have imagined Tony Balerdi's first language to be Spanish.

Tony had thought that the third star and that stupid kiss would mean closure and instead everything he feels for Adam just gets _worse_.

 

Tony, who essentially is a professional host, has hosted an unofficial club the last three years, the Adam’s survivors club, or sometimes AA, the Adam Anonymous. He started it after the third of his most promising protegés quit in tears and rage after Adam had borrowed money, said he loved her and cheated with her cousin visiting her in Paris, all in the same evening. All of it leaving her in such a bad shape she had to go and live with her mother in Solihull and work in a chip shop which was nothing short of a crime, given her potential.

He has served G&Ts to women with a lost, broken, look who can’t figure out why someone _who doesn’t even care_ would take that trouble to treat them so badly. Women putting the pieces of their broken relationship on the table and trying to make all the jagged pieces fit, like Sophié, their only female kitchen porter, who was small and scrappy and once poured boiling water of a chef for harassing her, sitting helplessly and staring into the air, saying: “If I could get it to make sense it wouldn’t hurt so bad.”

Tony felt the same, if he could only get all the separate pieces of Adam fitted back into their jigsaw he would be purged of his useless emotion, the demonstrated evidence that Adam was an actual asshole would sink in and he would cease to be so desperately in love, and finally let go of that bright shining thing he could see in him, which Adam himself seemed so desperate to drown and put out forever. It was true he wanted to know who Adam would be without a knife in his hand, but sometimes he thinks it is just so he would stop fucking stabbing everyone.

 

Tony resists the notion that he is sweeping up after Adam’s mess but he’s refusing to see promising careers go to waste because Adam is an arrogant maniac who can’t keep it in his pants (he has tried to talk to Adam about it, and Adam only smiles sweetly at him in a way that takes his breath away and promises to do better, and Tony, the resident member of the survivors club, believes him every time, until it happens again).

Anne Marie was the worst, sitting in Tony’s kitchen and determinedly drinking glass after glass of water after her stint in Milano’s most fashionable rehab. She breathes in, holds it, and breathes out.

“He knew I was pregnant,” she says and Tony nods, confirming it, not able to meet her eyes. “And he hasn’t been in touch? He hasn’t sent a forwarding address or post box, or even a drug dealer?”

Tony shakes his head.

“Okay, okay,” she says placing her hands down at the table top, staring at them. “ I can do this. This is okay, this will be okay.”

Tony swears after Anne-Marie, and again after Jean-Luc’s funeral, he will never do this again, and yet when he sees Hélene he still starts to prepare the crash pad.

 

He’s more pissed off than jealous because Helene is an excellent chef de parti and can’t be replaced. And however frustrating it is that Adam is up to his usual bullshit, there is also something vindicating about seeing another person fall prey to Adam’s wily charms. Tony’s flesh might be weak to the temptation but at least he is not the only one.

 

Only, Helene doesn’t need the survivors club, because amazingly, chucking one million oysters seems to have provided Adam with a hitherto undemonstrated emotional intelligence and he conducts their relationship as if he was a real, breathing human being. It doesn’t seem to help much as three months in she unceremoniously dumps him (I've been here and done this and I have the fucking divorce to prove it, I don’t need to do it again to know its a fucking shite idea, all right?) and what’s even better, refuses to quit her job in a huff.

 

There are a couple of weeks of shouting and burnt sauces and broken plates before Tony takes Adam aside and explains patiently that if his ex-girlfriend, who is the best chef de parti in London, by some miracle elects to save their sorry asses by staying at her post and not quitting her job, actually making her quit has finally taken Adam’s assholery to illegal levels and if Adam brings the union and a harassment suit down on the Langham, he is out the door, even if his name is on it. When he broaches the subject with Helene she smiles and says there is no way she is quitting, with Tony paying five times her wage at Conti’s. In return he promises her endless baby-sitting; not by him of course, Caitlin just loves showing truculent ten-year olds how to do the filing. So Adam spends two months in sullen and baffled silence at the world for ganging up on him like this, devising strange dishes that don’t turn out quite right. He gets over it though and sometimes Tony catches him looking over, a speculative gleam in his eyes.

 

***

  


“Hey Tony, c’mere I need you to try this.” Adam commands him imperiously and Tony sighs, put upon. Helene or Max would be better tasters and better judges but Adam insists. He is holding the spoon out, instead of handing it to Tony like a normal person, and Tony is forced to bend his head awkwardly to take the bite. Adam’s hand coming up the cradle the back of his head to support him. The touch is fleeting barely, connecting before its gone but it still burns. All of Adam’s touches burn and at the end of the day Tony collects hundred little burning spots, a squeeze of his shoulder, a hand on the inside of his forearm, a hip bumped against his, a nudge with a warm shoulder, a hand in the small of his back.

 

He keeps looking at Tony. The blue eyes will follow him when he walks through the kitchen to his office. He will look up before prepping the front of house staff for the lunch service and Adam will be standing at the door to the kitchen, arms crossed over his broad chest and his blue eyes locked on Tony. Closing up in the evening, Adam will look at him quietly over lists of orders and food budgets, their mundane conversation falling quiet and Adam just looking at him, like he can’t look his fill. It makes Tony’s breath catch and his skin flush but he tries to shake it off and continue.It means nothing, just Adam and his perpetual cycle of shit.

 

***

 

The fourth time Adam comes in late Jean-Luc calls him into his makeshift office in the pantry after lunch service. The door is open and Adam is really not looking forward to the whole kitchen hearing the boss rip him a new one.

“The fourth time, _américain_ ,” he says without preamble, “What the fuck is up with that?”

“I’m sorry chef,” Adam says, cold with misgivings “It won’t happen again, they are doing works on the Metro, both at Pantin and at Chatelet.”

Jean-Luc frowns at him.

“What the hell are you doing way up there?” he asks, obviously derailed from the issue.

“I live in Montfermeil,” Adam says and swallows nervously. He lives in a les Bosquets, the commute is one hour on a good day and he sleeps on a couch, but the rent is good.

Jean-Luc sighs and looks over at Claude, his second in command who’s going over the order lists by the pantry. “The kids lives in Montfermeil. He goes through Chatelet,” he says.

Claude mutters something in french that Adam can’t quite catch but he thinks amounts to “what the fucking shit”.

“Didn’t one of the boys say his roommate bailed on him a week before rent?” Jean-Luc continues, sounding infinitely weary and Claude nods, still not looking up.

“Le Dauphín,” he answers curtly.

Jean-Luc leans over, aiming his voice out through the door. “Antonio!” he yells and after a short while a young man with brown hair pops his head around the door. Adam knows his face, he’s front of house in some capacity or other but they haven’t really spoken.

“ _Oui chef?_ ”

“Antonio, this is your new flatmate” Jean-Luc says, gesturing at Adam. “He comes home with you tonight, poor bastard has been living up in the sticks.”

Antonio gives Adam a pitying look and nods. “I’ll come get you when I go tonight,” he says and when he leaves Adam hears whistles from the kitchen and somebody shouting “Another one for the fleapit!”

 

Antonio, or Tony as he curtly informs Adam, walks at a rapid clip and lives in an absolute dump, only a block from the restaurant. It seems to be entirely populated by young spanish guys, working in different restaurants and it smells overwhelmingly of bad plumbing and Lynx. It’s a warren of doors which Tony briefly points to, “Here is Juan, and the next one is Juan-Carlos, they work at Le Meurice. Over here is Carlito and Chu-chu. Chu-Chu works at Seb’on and Carlito is a Le Moulin, they share. We’re over here. Rent’s twice a month and we each two shelves in the kitchen and one in the fridge. Don’t be tempted to steal anyone’s milk, they all expired months ago and I keep mine in a mini-fridge in my room. It  would be advisable for you to do the same.” All of this he rattles off in a lilting accent.

“We?” Adam asks mildly because he is a grown-ass adult man and he is not about to share a room with this guy. He looks like his spine is so straight from the stick up his ass and like he blow-dries his hair every morning.

“You’re in the loft,” Tony says, “you get there through my room.”

“The Loft” turns out to be a charming euphemism for fucking crawl space not even a child could stand up straight in, but there is a bed and a window and an electric socket and what more does Adam need, really? It’s not like the place he’s staying at is the Ritz exactly.

“Its boiling in the summer and cold as shit in winter,” Tony tells him laconically, poking through the hatch, halfway up the ladder and resting his elbow on the floor. “But that’s all of Paris, really,” he adds with an eloquent shrug.

Adam looks at him, “So uh, the only way up here is through your room?” he asks, “What if I bring somebody over?”

Tony gives him an flat look. “You are going to be working to three every morning,” he says. “I hardly think you’ll be _entertaining_ that much.”

Adam, of course, takes it as a challenge.

 

A week later somebody asks how the flat sharing is going and Tony looks at them in unadulterated misery. “I just want to sleep for one night without anybody having sex a meter above my head,” he says. Adam responds to this by going to the men’s room and getting him 50 cents earplugs from the vending machine. “I hate you,” Tony says with feeling. They stick together for another year before Adam takes over Juan-Carlos room, and then another six months before he moves out entirely. Afterwards Adam kind of miss it, it was the only place he ever lived at where it was completely normal to cook at three in the morning and while there was never milk or detergent they never ran out of truffle oil, wine or black garlic.

  


***

  


“You should go for it,” Helene says.

“I should go for what?” Tony asks, idly making annotations in their order list. She is making ravioli and Tony is sitting beside her, asking advice on a new fish supplier; the sea bass and turbot was indifferent but their shrimps were superb. Adam, ever the perfectionist would tell him to drop them but Helene is more pragmatic and therefore better to confer with.

Helene smiles and nods meaningfully and when Tony follows her gaze, he sees Adam watching him, a smile tucked into the corner of his mouth.

Tony looks down at the papers again. “No,” he says decisively, “I should not.”

“Why not?” Helene asks, “Take a chance maybe?”

Tony shakes his head. “You’re assuming this hasn’t happened before,” he says and snags a piece of dough to make a misshapen ravioli that can go to the family meal, just for something to do with his hands.

 

_“I don’t need rehab Tony, I just need you.”_


	2. 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There is some mild Adam/Helene in this chapter because I'd like to imagine that when you go to Paris with your stunningly attractive ex, you might as well bang.

They are at Le Saint Sauveur, Adam is comfortably jammed in between Max and Reece, well into his fifth beer. Michel has already left, talking to a young woman. Tony is by the bar, stopping from picking up his drink to talk to some guy. The guy is tall and is leaning into Tony and Adam thinks he'll let it go a little longer before he gets over there to rescue him. Only, when he gets up Tony doesn't look like he needs rescuing, he is looking nervous but pleased, fiddling with his beer and delicately touching his nose, but it's not until he cracks a smile that it dawns on Adam that he is flirting. He nudges Max with his elbow.

"I didn't know Tony was..." he shrugs and looks over his shoulder and Max follows his eye.

"You didn't know Tony was gay?" he says unimpressed. "It's only slightly less obvious than the nose on his face."

"What? No, he never, he doesn't seem..." Adam protest.

"What's going on?" Reece looks up from his beer to ask.

"Adam is having a crisis, he just figured out Tony is gay."

Reece gave him a surprised look.

"You mean he didn't tell you himself? I once burnt my hand in my first month at Jean-Luc’s and when I yelled “cocksucker”he looked up and asked me what I wanted."

"That's pretty brutal," Max says with admiration.

"Tell me about it," Reece says grimly. "I'm thinking about trying a dehydrator," he says, changing the subject and normally Adam would be all over that, any cooking that's not cooking actual food and any chef who considers it is a disgrace to the world, but tonight he feels unsettled. He can't let this with Tony go, and anxiety is prickling under his skin. He has come to rely on Tony, rely on Tony liking him. Meeting his eyes with a grin in the morning, somebody to talk to about food in a way that doesn't involve competing or posturing. Tony is interested in what he has to say and just having somebody like that, participating in Adams life makes him feel more real. But maybe that's transient, maybe he only holds Tony's attention temporarily and once it become clear that he never in a million years would...well, then it would be withdrawn. Prickles run up and down his skin, pins and needles in his hands. Looking up  at the bar there's a woman who meets his eyes. She is very pretty, short, with dark skin and close cropped hair. Unthinkingly Adam picks up his beer and sets course for her, the pins and needles subside into the background, as does the worrying dilemma of Tony.

 

After this Adam snidely supposes that le Dauphin is French for sissy. And it takes another two years for him to find out that Tony is the heir to a hotel chain empire, quietly working his way up from the bottom. It takes him about ten minutes to figure out how that’s going to benefit him.

 

***

 

In February Adam and Helene goes to a freezing cold Paris for an inspiration trip, eating everything in their way and having quite a frankly ridiculous amount of no-strings sex.

“I, uh,um, I thought we didn’t do this anymore,” Adam says stunned, after Helene’s kisses him five seconds after sitting down next to him on the Eurostar. Helene rolls her eyes.

“Adam, I’m a single mum let out for one dirty weekend in Paris and I’m going to make the most of it. It’s not like I want to marry you, I just want a shag.” And while Adam is still reeling from that one she waves down an attendant to get a double scotch.

 

It’s the first glimpse he’s ever had of what Helene would have been like before Lily, the one who could go for days and don’t stop (well, that’s not true, the first glimpse of her was the woman who went to a party with him, was ditched at the party, went to the fish market at four in the morning, bought a heinous amount of sole and traipsed back to the Langham with him at six, fully down for cooking Sole Bonne Femme but instead coming up to his room to make love, and then worked the full day after). Adam is a little bit in awe, there really is no stopping her. She is always ready to try one more thing, talk to one more person, dive into the steaming mayhem of some kitchen to swap recipes, catch up with another old friend, or have one more round of sex. He thinks its a shame that she dumped him but he’s also a little bit relieved because there is no way he would be able to keep up with that for a longer time. The Adam of today pushing forty is a different creature from his twenty-year old self. If it hadn’t been for the arrival of Lily Helene would probably have taken over the culinary world by now, an event not so much prevented as postponed. And for once he is just happy to stand back and watch her shine.

 

They go to the 10th arrondissement and gorge themselves on North African street food, to the cafés and boulangeries for delicate, buttery pastry and black coffee, eat Vietnamese-French food, squeeze in a meal at a Michelin starred restaurant (one Adam isn’t banned from) and even make a midnight snack of crepes with banana and nutella (This is so good, Helene says happily, scarfing it down. The assigned drinker for the evening, she’s about a bottle, plus two cocktails in, and she makes Adam really miss being a happy drunk. “I’m putting this on the menu as it is, crepes, banana and a nutella straight from the packet.” Adam, the assigned sober person, still thinks she has a point). And in between that they manage to have  some really good sex. It’s a bit weird, Adam hasn’t really has sex with somebody he loves and trusts before. Or rather, he had loved Anne-Marie with a frightening intensity, recognizing his own frightened brittleness in her, both caught up in lives that felt like a roaring riptide, but like himself Anne-Marie was chronically unreliable, and their relationship was characterised by a tempestuous mix of jealousy and reunion. Helene, he has learnt to trust and he knows, exhilaratingly, that her returned trust in him is not unfounded, and that she wouldn’t sleep with him if she didn’t trust him. It makes him feel tender and affectionate.

“Don’t get soppy on me, Jones” she warns him, at his dopey smile, his hands carefully stroking her long limbs. “I’m just using your body for gratuitous, meaningless sex.”

“I know,” he says, beaming at her. “Isn’t it great?”

And she laughs and calls him a nutter and they go out for a run at the early markets before they take the train back to London. Adam buys two pounds of French butter for Tony, plus another pound of different cheeses and garlic sausage, and they are passing through the safety barriers in London before it even crosses his mind it might be unlawful.

“If you were caught in customs and deported over butter Tony would have had a stroke,” Helene snorts when he confesses the contents of his bag to her.  Adam thinks he could meet his own eyes in the mirror over that, if he got caught in the customs with a pound of French butter instead of cocaine, he could live with being that person. Only if he had been deported over butter Tony would have had a stroke, and then come back to life to travel to whatever hellhole they had sent him to to kill him personally. That too is reassuring knowledge.

 

***

 

It’s already early morning in Paris when Adam stumbles through the door to their room; Tony is asleep in his bed. He's curled up on his side and hands tucked under the pillow like a child. A bit of sun has come through a gap in the curtain and is threading copper through his brown hair. And Adam suddenly feels tired. He doesn't want to climb the ladder to his own musty room. There are beer bottles on the floor, an overflowing ashtray. The sheets are lanky and smell stale. Tony's room is neat and ordered, not exactly fussy or clean but like a chef’s station, tidy, organised, everything at its rightful place. Adam marvels at that, how he can keep his own station in the kitchen tidy no matter the pressure, but where he lives looks like somebody threw in a bomb and then closed the door. Or the hatch, as it were. He really doesn't want to climb the ladder to that confined smelly splace. He wants to lie down next to Tony, in his cleans sheets and his clean room with the sun poking through the curtain and sleep the sleep of the innocent. It's an entirely selfish impulse but why not do it? Tony likes him,that much he knows, so why not throw him a bone? God knows he has looked over too many times and found Tony watching him, looking away hastily with a flush in his cheeks. Or Tony’s hand has reached out and been withdrawn just shy of a caress; it will be fine, with alcohol and just a little fix still singing in his system, the shine just starting to wear off it seems like a good idea. An excellent idea. Adam wants to lie down next to Tony in his clean sheets and contentment, and why shouldn't he? He deserves it and Tony won't grudge him. Quickly, decisively he strips of his jeans and socks and sneaks into the bed in his t-shirt and underwear. Tony is already a perfect little spoon, curled on his side with his hands and knees tucked in, it's easy to curve around him. Tucking his head into the nape of his neck, just where it fits so well and sliding an arm around his chest. The bed smells safe and clean and a little expensive and the room is slowly starting to float. Adam creeps even closer and then he is asleep.

 

He wakes later in the morning, the hangover like stabbing thunder behind his eyes, by Tony slowly stirring in his arms. For a moment there is warmth and softness with Tony burrowing closer burying his face in Adams chest, his soft hair tickling his jaw. Adam goes absolutely stiff, this is it he realizes. The moment where he must unequivocally reject Tony and where henceforth all of Tony's love and support will be withdrawn. The gay panic moment. The line in the sand. Heterosexuality must assert itself.

 

Except that doesn't happen because Tony wakes and for a split second gives him a sleepy rumpled smile that makes Adams pulse spike, and then he frowns.

"Adam" he says, voice scratchy and hoarse "what the _fuck_ are you doing here?"

"I..." Adam starts.

"Jesus Christ, what is actually _wrong_ with you?" Tony asks, looking more and more pissed off by the second. "It's six in the morning and I’ve had about three hours of sleep, I'm officially  too tired for your _connerie_ right now. " Tony drops his head into the mattress and groans, Adam can feel the movement through the arm that's still wrapped snugly around his chest, like Tony's forgotten it's there.

"Answer me honestly, what are you doing here?"

"It, uh, seemed nice?" Adam answers tentatively and Tony makes a noise like a wounded walrus in response.

" _Of_ _course_ it seemed nice, get the fuck out of my clean bed with sheets that I take to the laundromat every fucking week and creep back into your fucking Tracy Emin wreckage of a bed, with sheets you haven't even changed since you moved in, you _unbelievable_ fuck-up of a human being."

"Aw please, I can stay?" Adam begs, the ground feeling firm under his feets again. This is a role he plays well, arrogant and lovable asshole to Tony's exasperated straight (well) man. "No," Tony growls in response and then pauses and sighs "unless," he says, voice growing soft "unless there is another reason for you wanting to stay in my bed?" The look he gives Adam is speculative and sultry and Adam can feel his heart jump into his chest, they ground after all not so firm as he had thought.  "No I didn't think so,” Tony says in response to whatever face he's pulling and kicks Adam in the shin "now fuck off, I have at least ten more minutes to sleep before I have to get up."

And Adam decides that prudence is the better part of valour in this particular game of chicken and scoots out of the bed.

"I'm keeping the trousers!" Tony yells after him.

 

He does, its the first time Adam has seen him wear jeans and they are so large he has to fold the waistband to keep them over his slim hips. A week later there is a packet of new sheets on his bed, still in the plastic wrapping and Adam knows he’s forgiven this particular stunt. Tony never returns his pants.

***  


Adam was ten when his mother died and he was shipped around to relatives. By the time he was 12 he had changed school four times and learnt how to be instantly likeable. He got along well enough with his relatives but sooner rather than later there was always some snag, they wanted to go on a holiday, maybe a child moved back from college, or he broke one plate too many. In either case he was out and on to the next one. He learnt pretty quickly how to shave away anything difficult or different in his personality at school. He was fun, he was popular, he had friends. Sometimes not for longer than a couple of months but the important thing was that he wasn't lonely. He was terrified of being lonely and if that meant shutting the door to large swathes of his personality then so be it. It wasn't until Adam was sixteen and an uncle claiming that he needed a job pushed him into a kitchen and he fell in love with Food, he learned to be difficult again. In the kitchen you were meant to be difficult, but not too difficult, some things being unacceptable even there. A chef was not a sissy and Adam wanted to be a chef more than anything else.

 

He was in his late teens when he realised he was also attracted to men and well into his twenties before he admitted it was not anything that would go away any time soon and now in the clear dawn of his new and reformed life it's starting to feel like it's something that won't bring the sky crashing down around him. So Adam fucking Jones is also attracted to men, big deal. Doesn't mean he's ever going to something about it. The key word here is also. Also attracted to men but really mostly women. He's been sitting on that for most of his life and he's not about to let it out anytime soon. It’s just that Tony and his firm belief that Adam can't love him starts to feel like a festering wound.

"I know not everything is possible" he has said, the words pulled out of him like blood from a stone and Adam was an idiot. Showing off in front of him like a peacock without any thought of what it might cost Tony to see it.

 

They are in the middle of a family meal, chicken noodle soup, salad and fresh crusty bread, when Caitlin announces that there is somebody to see Tony. Adam already at the mouth of the kitchen and has an excellent view of a tall man unfolding himself from one of the tables, and Tony’s shout of surprised joy, throwing his arms around the man and actually lifting him off the floor.

“ _Jaume! Pendejo! ¿_ _No te he visto en años_ _, que haces aqui? ¿Tienes hambre, quieres comer?_ ” he is laughing, the implacable maitre’d facade cracking for once. He is ushering the man towards the kitchen, waving his hands. “ _Ven a la cocina. Sientate, estábamos cominedo_.”

Adam don’t think he has seen Tony this animated in ages, he’s always quietly dignified and guarded, and now he’s grinning like a dork.

“ _T_ _ _ony_ , mi amor _,” the man says and easily settles his arm around Tony’s shoulder, following him into the kitchen where Adam feels like he has just swallowed a bristle brush.

“Max, you remember Jaume don’t you? This is Max from Jean-Luc’s, and Helene our second in command, and of course you know Adam, and this is Caitlin and Jeannie and our prodigy David,” Tony rattled off everybody at the table, most of them nodding or shaking hands, Jaume gave Adam a cold look that said, indeed he _did_ remember him from Paris.   For the most of the meal Adam tries to keep quiet. He can’t actually remember that much from the last years in Paris and anyone knowing him or Tony from that time won’t think too highly of him. Reaching out and making amends is part of his sobriety program, the first steps he took in a dingy basement in New Orelans and now continues in Dr Rosshilde’s expensive sitting room, but it’s a really awkward thing to bring up first thing at a lunch table. “Pass the salt and also apologies for borrowing money, insulting you, hitting on your wife/girlfriend/mother, I was on a lot of mind-altering substances” is not a casual way to bring it into conversation. He knows he has changed and its best to let people see that for themselves. Except Jaume, doesn’t really talk to him once and seems happy just to stay wrapped in conversation with Tony, their knuckles touching on the table top. Adam catches himself wondering if he ever made Tony smile like that, or talk a mile a minute in rapid clip spanish. His french is good but his spanish is passable at best. He puts his head down and focuses on his food, and the next day, for no reason he can honestly account for, stops by Tony’s office with two Portuguese custard _nata_ pastries and a cup of coffee. They are Tony’s favourite and his face actually lights up at the sight of them.

“ _Merci_ ,” he smiles at Adam, the harsh line of his mouth momentarily softened in his round face.

“ _De rien_ ,” Adam mutters and slinks away to the kitchen where his focus is needed completely and there is no time or space to consider that ache below his breastbone or the anxious prickling in his hands.

 

Jaume is currently living in London, doing work for some client and he is quite a frequent visitor to the Langham. Adam hates Jaume, and he hates that he hates Jaume even more. This takes the expression of aggressive niceness every time he comes into the kitchen. Adam will smile in a way that feels like it’s straining the back of his head and makes David, sweet, shy, bumbling David, crouch down behind his station or find an urgent errand to the safety of the pantry.

“Would you like some coffee, Jaume? Can I cook you anything?”

The face Helene gives him is incredulous. Jaume only gives him a cold look and waves him off setting course for Tony’s office where the exclaimed greeting always makes Adam grind his teeth.

“Adam?”, Heléne comes quietly up to him where he stands, eyes locked towards the frosted glass wall of the office.

"Adam, I know you have been working hard on reforming from your previous arseholeness?"

"Yes?"

"So I'm here to tell you, as a friend, that you're being a massive prick." He looks at her and she places callused and burnt hand gently on his arm.

"A complete twat, a berk, Adam." Her tone is soft and sympathetic. "A knobhead, a pillock, a clotpole and a..."

"Yeah I get your point! I just don't  know what to do about it. And, I think you made up at least four of those words. "

Helene sighs, looking very tired.

"How did you solve your previous arsehole problems?"

"I moved to New Orleans, got clean and shucked a million oysters."

"Yeah, that might not work anymore. Although Tony might give you the time off to go to New Orleans. Depending how fast you chuck an oyster, of course." She shrugs in an eloquents gesture, "I don't have a patent solution. Except maybe chill a little around Jaume, yeah? You don't have to physically pee on Tony's leg for him to know that you're his friend too. It's difficult enough trying to have a life outside the restaurant as it is."

"It's not that he can't have friends...!" Adam protests and trails off. It's just that he can't have friends who he smiles at like that. It's just that he can't have friends who kiss him.

Helene gives him a long look.

"Like I said Adam, you're being a total berk. Just relax a little, eh?"

He later looks up the word “berk” and finds that's it's rhyming slang for Berkshire Hunt and that's possibly the nicest way Adam has been called a cunt in his whole life.

 


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings for homophobic language further down in the chapter. And I'm not proud of it but some food descriptions are lifted straight from Nigel Slater.

 

 

There is a reason why Adam thinks of Tony at four in the morning when his thoughts have churned themselves into a thick glue, stuck inside his head in a never ending mess of regret. It’s true he feels guilty about not falling in love with Tony. And he does feel guilty about using him and letting him down in Paris, for leading him on and flirting with him whenever he wanted something. He does feel guilty about Tony’s love for him being the one bright and precious thing in his life that he didn’t manage to break, not for lack of trying. He does feel guilty for banking on Tony’s affection to resurrect him and bring him back to glory. But there is the other thing which he feels most guilty about, which he can only admit with his six o’clock brain, when he has left the bed and the grainy texture of insomnia, after a shower, coffee and another morning of sobriety. When the work of his hands have calmed the clamour of his brain, cooking something in the empty kitchen, refining the flavours until perfect. What he can admit then is this:

He doesn’t feel the most guilt over not being able to fall in love with Tony, he feels the most guilt about the moment when he knew  _could_.

Even with his patchy memory he can remember it clearly, an evening in Paris at the beginning of his downward spiral when the increasing lack of control he had over his life felt dangerous, exciting and almost fun. He can actually, embarrassingly, not recall the exact circumstances, so much of those days are lost in a soft blur illuminated by stomach turning, humiliating lightbulbs, clear memory casting up how far he had sunk in a bright terrifying glare. The memory is in itself is not a bad one were it not for the succeeding one, nauseating because it can’t be blamed on the drugs, or alcohol, or his narcissism, all these things he can work on, make amends, get better; no this is all down to Adam, to his fundamental Adamness which he thinks he can’t do anything about, although he is going to be damned if he’s not going to try.

He and Tony are in a back alley somewhere (he doesn't where, is it behind Jean-Luc’s? The Saint Sauveur? Someplace else entirely? Adam’s favourite past time in those days were visiting _haute cuisine_ restaurants and complaining about the food until he was either thrown out or in a fight). The streetlights falling over the soft flop of Tony’s hair, he’s laughing, propping Adam up and his usual reserve is broken down. Like boxers who have feinted against each other they have finally made contact, his hands on Adam’s waist and shoulders feels safe, feels familiar. And Adam laughs and lets himself fall forward, burrowing his head into Tony’s shoulder, let his arms come up and embrace him, holding him tight. He remembers his nose tracing a trail along Tony’s neck, his ear, temple and cheek until they end up nose to nose breathing each other’s air. It wasn’t a kiss, but the promise of one, and somehow much more intimate. They walked home with Tony tucked into Adam’s side, his arm around Adam’s waist, Adam nosing in his hair and smiling at him the whole time like nobody else under the sun existed. They said good night and Tony shyly squeezed Adam’s hand before leaving.

Of course in the bright light of day Adam’s quintessential Adamness reaserted himself, he had never had a relationship in his life that he had not managed to screw up so why add Tony to the body count? Better to let him believe that Adam was hopelessly straight and unable to return his affections. Adam could still remember the next day in the kitchen, flirting with Leonella, their newest waitress, how the luminous smile Tony directed at him vanished in a second and never returned. And things happened the way they did, and what keeps Adam up at night is the thought that Tony might believe that Adam is unable to love him when in fact he chose not to, and he will never know if it was cowardice or bravery, mercy or cruelty.

 

***

 

Tony is asleep on the sofa in his office when Adam comes in, it’s an afternoon nap in between lunch and dinner service. He’s taken his shoes and tie off and hung his jacket neatly on a chair. He sleeps squashed into the sofa with a clean apron folded under his head and Adam wants nothing more than to spoon up behind him and fold his body around him. He knows now that him getting into Tony’s bed in Paris had nothing to do with clean sheets, he just wants to fold himself around the lines of that body and bury his face in the soft hair. During their short relationship Helene called him an octopus for his habit of spooning around her, sleepily nudging him in the ribs to give her some space. He is an octopus, or maybe even a choking vine, needing too much, wanting to wrap around the thing he loves and hold on so hard it never slips away or chokes and dies. He slinks out of of the office and into the back alley walking restlessly back and forth behind the Langham’s kitchen. When Helene comes out for a smoke  Adam asks if he can bum one off her.

“It’s only home-rolled?” she says apologetically and hands him the tobacco and papers and Adam smiles, asking the recovering addict if he can roll his own.

“No worries, I’ve got this,” he says and focuses on getting the fiddly paper just right, that first minute movement to set the roll. He knocks the top and bottom of the cigarette to settle the tobacco and sets it in his mouth, hesitating weather to actually light it or not.

“I haven’t taken anything in two and a half years,” he says around the ciggie to Helene. “No booze, no drugs, no irresponsible hook-ups, no nothing.”

Helene folds her arms and looks at him critically, the way she looks at sub-par materials that she knows she is going to have to do something amazing with.

“So why do you want a smoke now?” she says.

“I just feel….” he searches for the right word, “terrible,” he settles for. “I feel like my skin is itching and my insides is just….”

“Low-grade shitty,” Helene says “Feels like a mild, but terrible, hangover? Like you did something terrible and you have to apologize but you don’t know for what or to whom? Like your four-o’clock brain but its five in the afternoon?”

“Yes, and usually I drink or I screw, or go out to party or cook until’ I fall down, but I can’t do any of that anymore! Except cook of course, but if I start something now I’ll mess up all the prep for the evening service, and normally I wouldn’t care but I’m trying not to be an asshole,” Adam says fervently, taking the cigarette out, overwhelmed with how well she understands him.

“Adam, how old were you when you started drinking?” Helene asks slowly.

“Fourteen, I think, why?”

“Oh crikey, four years older than Lily. Okay.” She takes the cigarette from him and lights it, and takes a deep drag.

“I have a suggestion for you: Why don’t you just go home when the restaurant closes tonight and do something that you like?”

Adam looks at her uncomprehending, usually when the restaurant closes, at one, he stays until two, testing recipes. Helene sighs.

“You live at the Langham, which by the way must cost you a mint, you don’t clean, you don’t wash, you don’t live. Do you even have clothes that are not chef’s whites? What do you even like to do when you are not cooking? Besides drinking that is.”

“I...I was pretty big into recreational drug use?”

She laughs, “So I’ve heard. Look what I mean is, before I had Lily I was an idiot. I’m still an idiot but I’ve had to learn things, I’ve had to learn to take care of myself because if I don’t I can’t take care of Lily. And I’m not saying that you need to, like love yourself before you love somebody else, because that’s complete bullshit, but in the end you are the one who needs to take care of you, you see what I mean?”

“Not really no,”

“Somehow you’ve got to teach yourself how to be a person Adam, ‘cause nobody else can.”

“But you teach me how to be a person.”

“I’ve got my own shit to do, I’ve got to teach Lily being a person and learn how to perfectly sautee turbot and reverse engineer Conti’s secret recipe for Tête du Veau. Go home tonight Adam, read a book or something. Feel like shit. Be a person.” She blows the smoke in his face.

“This payback for that time I didn’t give you leave for Lily’s birthday?” he ask suspiciously. There seems to be something wrong with her advice, it distincly lacks coddling.

She doesn’t even bother with an answer, only gives him a look and blows another well aimed cloud of smoke in his eyes.

 

***

 

“I might actually have to kill you myself,” Jaume says, neatly pickin up Lorca and settling him in his lap. Lorca is Jaume’s one month old pomeranian puppy and has effectively curtailed all of Jaume’s visits to the Langham kitchen (which Tony finds a bit of a relief to be honest, he doesn't know what’s going on but Adam’s behaviour is starting to weird him the fuck out).

“It’s not that bad,” he says,trying to wave it off.

“It’s not that bad? How can it be not that bad? I turn around and not only has he wormed his way back into your life, you’ve also given him a kitchen in your prime hotel on a silver platter! Do you remember what it was like the last time?”

“This time is different, it’s professional,” Tony tries vaguely. He does, in fact, vividly remember what it was like the last time.

“Do you remember getting up in the middle of the night to look for him? Do you remember when you woke up in my flat, in Barcelona, and you were down on the street before you remembered that he had been gone for a year! Do you remember? I remember!”

“Jaume, please.”

Jaume scratches Lorca’s ears and says nothing, Tony shifted uncomfortably in his chair. Speaking about this with Jaume was always tricky, mostly because he is used to be so guarded about his emotions. Adam had been gone for a year before Tony could even bring himself to confess that he had been in love with him out loud, in one of the most gruelling sessions he’s ever had with Dr Rosshilde. He’d never had to tell Jaume of course, he has known it since it happened.The sense of shame and stupidity is so strong, like embarking of a stupid involuntary crusade and the only thing he can do is try to ride it out with as much grace as possible.

“I’ll tell you the truth, it was a much less emotional decision than you seem to think. Restaurants always runs at a loss, that’s just what they do, Michelin star or not.What I was running before Adam showed up was mediocre prestige dining at best. A place where you take a philistine to impress them with the price tag. Let’s be gauche and say Adam only keeps it together for about two years, before he inevitably breaks down, pisses in the tureen at a gala dinner and OD’s in the walk-in, even counting the refurbishment of the kitchen, we will still have made that money back, not from the restaurant or even from the Langham in London, but from the Langham in Manchester, in Edinburgh, in Berlin. And even in that chain of European budget hotels we pretend we don’t own. Most of the guests at the hotel will never dine in the restaurant but instead get most of their meals from roomservice, cooked in a kitchen which is most definitely not “ Adam Jones as the Langham”. But those three stars, that connection will still lend those dishes a stamp of quality that will justify the frankly extortionist price we put on them, even if they have never been near a top chef. A guest staying at the Langham in Belfast, if such a godforsaken place existed, would feel that it was a luxury to dine on pre-packaged sandwiches because of those stars. The long game was never the restaurant but always the hotels. Of course it was never a sound financial decision to give Adam Jones a kitchen, the man is in a perfectionist maniac with no idea of compromises, but that’s not the point. The point is that the long game benefits the hotels, and even a failing restaurant benefits the hotels.”

“Was this the spiel you gave the board or your papa?”

“Neither, as they don’t know about my unfortunate infatuation and recognize good business when they see it, I didn’t have to justify myself to them,” Tony says primly.

“Oh my god, you really are so in love with him aren’t you? You probably sleep with his portrait under your pillow and whisper to it: Please love me, every night. Once your hands touched during service and -”

“Jaume, please, fuck you. I appreciate that you are concerned but this is, this is _working_. Adam is doing good, he’s clean and not screwing the waitstaff, which is all I can ask. I’m not wasting away from a broken heart.”

“Adam not being a complete disaster is not “the least you can ask”.”

Tony held up a finger and tapped it to the table.

“I let him down once, I let my feelings get in the way of...I could have helped him but I wanted him to, I wanted what _I_ wanted instead of what was best for Adam….”

Tony scrubs his face with his hands, “About a year before Adam disappeared Jean-Luc had been pulling quite big strings to get him into rehab and he had somehow managed to get Adam to consent. And it was less about him realizing that he needed help, so much that he was flat out of money and had run out of credit with his dealer. So he had agreed to go. A few days before he was due, somebody lent him enough money that he could pay off a little of his debts, but mostly go on week-long bender. He brought Anne-Marie with him. Jean-Luc never raised the idea of rehab again. So, there are debts between us but not the ones you think.”

“And you gave him that money?”

Tony nods wordlessly.

“And he never told anybody that it was you?”

“No. Jean-Luc was furious, if he had found out I did it I would have been out on my ass for sure. I would never have worked in his restaurant or anywhere in Paris again. I might have worked at the Langham but we would never have been able to hire a decent French-trained chef. My name would have been... pfuiit, _kaput_.”

 

Afterwards he reflected that it was probably the dumbest decision he had ever made in his life because he knew, _everyone knew,_ that Adam was out of control, but because Tony was in love, and wanted to be the person Adam felt he could trust and be the person who would stick to his side no matter what, because he wanted to know who Adam would be without a knife in his hand and the people he trusted the most stabbing him in the back. He wanted to see what Adam would do if granted trust. And he wanted to be what Adam _wanted_ not what he needed. He couldn’t have borne it if Adam had gone to rehab and hated him for it, he wanted to keep Adam in his life more than he wanted him to be sober. Tony could still remember those intense blue eyes turned on him with the force of a supernova.

“I don’t need rehab Tony, I just need a few days to straighten my shit out. To get myself together.” In his memory it is always raining, the water clinging to the tips of Adam’s wild hair. His eyes were red-rimmed and his hands flying, his body too skinny and moving too fast. The smell of him, how he was the thing Tony loved most in the world. “I don’t need rehab Tony, I just need you. I just need you to help me.”

Jaume look at him kindly once he has stopped talking, every word stripping his tongue raw.

“You do realize not even Adam would blame you for that? You got manipulated by an addict, he would have said anything to keep away from rehab. Even Adam would admit as much today.”

“I know, I know but... He could still be in France, cooking at the place he loved the most if I hadn’t, hadn’t…” Tony sucks his cheeks, looking away. The days of humiliation afterwards realising that he knew, Adam knew, the secret that Tony had done his best to hide away, to ignore, and if he knew they all knew, the laughing macho bastards in the kitchen, laughing behind his back at the pathetic fag mooning after Adam, the most unwanted member of his harem. “Sure I don’t mind gay people as long as they don’t try anything with me…”

“We all do stupid things for love,” Jaume’s words break him out of his thoughts.

Yes,Tony wants to say, like giving somebody a restaurant and hoping that they will love you for it. That moment in Adam’s room explaining that he didn’t want any more than Adam was prepared to give had been one of the most humiliating in his life, simply because he had never expected Adam to think that he owed him anything, that there was a debt between them. Tony will never be able to look at Adam without remembering Anne Marie drinking glass after glass of water and thinking that if his heart had only been a little harder it would not have happened. Somewhere in a perfect world, where Tony is not so lovesick that the mere chance of anything happening between him and Adam clouding his judgement, Adam got into rehab in time, never knocked up Anne Marie, never released rats on Michel and Jean-Luc is enjoying the golden light of his retirement years in the Rhone-valley, among grapes and chickens like he always planned to.

He turns the saucer of the coffee cup, studying the black liquid inside the cup.

“We all do stupid things for love,” he agreed. “Not all of us takes four persons with us in the fall though.”

“You are not, and were not, responsible for his actions.”

“I have a very lovely and very expensive therapist that tells me the same thing. However the word “enabler” keeps coming through my mind.”

“As much as I hate to tell you this, Adam seems to have grown up and moved on, maybe you should too?”

“Adam didn’t see the fallout of his own actions. I did. He says he chucked a million oysters as penance, maybe I’m still doing mine.”

Jaume rolled his eyes “Yes, two years of hard labour in the salt mines of straight infatuation.” He lifted Lorca and put him in Tony’s lap. “Here, you need a good cuddle and to grow up.”

Tony looked down on the silky heap of hair in his lap, he was going to need to change his suit before he even went near the kitchen at the Langham again.

 

***

 

Tony, Helene and Caitlin are tasting their way through the new menu. Raising trends food have given rise to at least three vegetarian dishes, with fancy locally grown and foraged ingredients, and a more nose- to-tail approach to meat. Adam is still holding out on gluten and lactose free though. If you have an allergy you should just realize that French food is not for you and stay in. And vegans should just crawl back under whatever rock they had emerged from. Tony had to physically restrain him from going out to shout at a guest who asked if they could make Pâte en Croûte gluten free.  

Tony likes the cows cheeks but he is frowning at the tripe. Caitlin is also frowning.

"I have no idea which wine to recommend with this," she says eventually and Tony nods slowly.

"We don't really have anything that fits," he admits, chewing the food over. “No wines with that pleasing aroma of _eu de_ wet dog.”

Adam wants to smack them both, you can't have nose to tail without innards and goddamn if they are going to wuss out it now just because they are squeamish about bowels.

"We could use them to make our own sausages?" Adam suggests testily, that’s not how tripe works but he’s too annoyed to care now, Tony sucks his teeth thoughtfully.

"We could, but I'm not sure I could live down all the sausage stuffing jokes."

Helene snorts and Adam feels his face grow hot, only Caitlin is made from sterner stuff.

"I could check with housekeeping and see if they need anyone for pillow biting."

"Or shirt lifting," Tony agrees amiably and takes another bite of the tripe.

"Or you could hire a pastry chef and start fudge..."

"All right that's enough," Adam cuts her off sharply. Her tone is too glib, he feels protective of something but he can't quite figure out what.

"The tripe is off the menu, we'll think of something else."

"It's all right Adam," Tony says. "I am gay, I'm allowed to joke about it."

Adam cant breathe, his face feels too hot, his hands want to flutter and he has to force them to be still.

"We're not that kind of kitchen, OK?" he manages, his tongue like lead.

They're not, like all kitchens shouting is talking in a normal tone and even on a good day with everything running smoothly at least fifty percent of all talk is curse words and insults. But they don't do that, not those insults. Tony has been called pendejo, moron, imbecile, artichoke-brain, and a slew of other much less flattering things but never that.

"I know that, but it's not a bad thing. I'm gay, I won’t be ashamed of it. "

Adam is staring at his knife,the work top, at his hands, anywhere, not to look at Tony, working frantically to be still and unnoticeable. He nods and mercifully Tony let's the subject drop. They don't put tripe on the menu.

 

***

 

"I'm moving out of the Langham," Adam announces to Tony, sitting down in his office.

"Well praise the Lord, let me know when so we can have housekeeping fumigate your room," Tony says not looking away from the computer. The sound of the keys clicking is the only noise in the office for a little while.

"Caitlin will help you settle your bill," he adds when Adam doesn't say anything or get up to leave.

"No I was wondering if you, uh um.."

"No, you can absolutely not stay with me. Or David! He's too nice to say it but his girlfriend really will kill you."

"No, I was wondering if you could help me look? I've no idea what I'm doing."

Tony looks away from the screen to give him a small smile.

"Yeah, I've got a friend I could call. Any preferences?"

"I don't want to share a kitchen or a bathroom and I need to be able to get home once the tube stopped running."

Tony frowns, pursing his lips making him look even more like a hare than normal.

"That’s like asking for the moon in London. We’ll see what we can do, maybe you have to get a bicycle eh?" His voice is warm and the lilt jus so and Adam finds himself smiling. It's a gift to have friends, to have family, who will help you out when you need it. He looks down on his own hands in his lap, blister and burns and cuts, chef's hands, unlike Tony's well manicured ones, the palms soft as butter. For a second he has the urge to reach out and touch but he suppresses it, doesn't dare to. Their ease feels too new, too fragile for him to push it, however much he itches.

***

Helene get a phone call during lunch service and all Adam can hear after she hangs up is profuse swearing.

"Helene, what?" he calls, using his chef's voice.

"Babysitter fell through, chef. I don’t have anybody to pick Lily up after school."

"Not your mom?"

"Mum's away, visiting my sister in Leeds."

Helene plates the croquettes with a worried frown.

"Shit," she says with feeling.

"Anything the matter?" Tony asks, on the other side of the pass to pick the plates up.

"Helene lost her babysitter. Nobody can pick Lily up from school. It will still be lunch service when she needs to go."

"I'll go," Tony says. "I can dash out a bit earlier, Caitlin's got it under control and Lily knows me all ready.

"Would you? Oh thank you Tony!"

"No problem, just call them ahead yes?"

Helene salutes with her hand to her white chefs hat. "You got it, boss," she says.

"Good, I don't want any misunderstandings, tell them an incredibly handsome gay man is coming to pick your daughter up. We have enough with Adam’s sex scandals as it is without the maitre’d getting arrested for child abduction."

"Hey, I have no sex!" Adam says indignantly,  meaning that there has been no scandals because he cares about the Langham and he had been trying, goddamnit.

Bu of course Helene giggles and Tony shot him one of his delighted tight-lipped smiles.

"Happy to hear that Adam, even if a little too much information," he says mildly. Adam feels his face exploding in heat, blushing in a way he hasn’t done in years.

"I just meant that..." and it's Davids giggling that really undoes him and he slinks away to the back kitchen to hide his face at the gas burners, Max cackling all the way.

 

***

Tony’s friend finds Adam a modest one room apartment, the kitchen is smallish but well laid out. Living on his own turns out to be a steep learning curve. Adam finds that he can’t drink milk fast enough to keep the last bit from souring, unavoidably detected just after he’s poured it into his cup of coffee at four in the morning. He learns that he nearly never has the time and energy to cook at home, however that he likes to tinker with fermentation and that a meal of hard bread, homemade half sour pickles, pate and cheese is satisfying and will keep almost indefinitely. He learns that once a month he _has_ to find the time to run to the laundromat on the corner, or turn his underwear inside out. He learns that he enjoys walking barefoot on the hardwood floors nearly no matter the cold and he learns that he hates washing up enough that is worth spending the time and energy to get a dishwasher (it's so tiny it makes him laugh every time he loads it).

 

Dr. Rosshilde is impressed with his progress. They still meet for group and she still draws his blood every two weeks. He likes it, the knowledge that's someone's checking up on him. That there is an implacable line that he can't charm, or cheat, or talk his way around. Either his blood comes back clean or it doesn't and he is the one who decides. Every day he gets to decide. Group is both a blessing and a torture but he continues to go. "Doing things which are difficult is good for you Adam," dr Rosshile explains. "Failing at group is a very safe way for you to practice failure."

"I'm not failing at group!" Adam protests. "I'm here every week." Dr Rosshile gives him one of her patented smiles with frowny eyebrows and pats his hand, somehow wordlessly explaining that in spite of his presence he is still very much failing at group. Tony laughs a solid five minutes when he tells him this, and Adam has the distinct feeling he is laughing at him rather than with him. Not being an arsehole is a long process.

 ***

Adam invites himself over to Tony for interior decoration advice, imagining Tony's home to be full of plush pillows and exquisite knick-knacks. He is kind of shocked to find it sparse to the point of austere.

"It's so clean," he says enviously.

"I have a cleaner that comes twice a week," Tony says, shrugging. "And a grocery service."

"Can you keep milk at home?"

"Not a chance, and the long expiry one is disgusting. I decant it and freeze it whenever I can remember, otherwise it just goes off."

Adam does the rounds in the flat, no pictures on the walls, no houseplants. Bookshelves with books and magazines, coffee table books on design and men's wear. A huge flat screen TV on the wall. It's nothing at all like the hotel.

"I had thought you'd be I don't know, cosier?"

"I'm always working, when would I have time for a cosy home? This way at least it's relaxing."

Adam thinks of Tony's office which is a warren of papers and crates and fliers and old hotel debris, where he keeps at least two spare suits and three photographs of his family and wonders if this is a place where Tony only sleeps, his whole life lived at the Langham.

 

Tony doesn't know if he should be flattered or outraged by Adam just assuming that he knows anything about interior decorating. Having Adam poking around in his flat is nice though; he's looking through the shelves, picking up a book here and there,looking out the window at the view. He’s like a cat making himself at home. Tony's is putting out a meal of odds and ends, he's not a chef and wouldn't dream of cooking for Adam, as if he would be able to do much more than to get a frying pan out before Adam would butt in, so he's putting out a simple meal, still in its wrappers and cartons. Crisp ficelle bread, some tiny purple-black olives, miniature gherkins, a knobbly salami and cheeses, some lovely dark Muscat grapes. He pours a glass of wine for himself (he suggested early that Adam might look into some non-alcoholic wine and Adam responded by trying to murder him with his eyes and go on a rant against what he considered mealy-mouthed, non-proper food, which lasted for a week).

They eat at the counter, with their hands and Tony nearly doesn't have to struggle to not follow Adams hands and look at his mouth.

"So what's your advice for living a settled life? As someone who's managed to work that much and still keep your life together?"

Tony snorts. It’s obvious that Adam doesn’t know just how much of a walking disaster Tony is most days. It’s amazing what you can get away with just wearing a tie to work.

"No advice," he says shaking his head and shoulders, "I've just figured out what's important and ignore the rest."

"Oh really?"

"I've got a good wine cellar and a big bed."

He gestures towards the bedroom with his chin and Adams eyes flick quickly over towards the door and back to his face and Tony is horribly, uncomfortably aware of what he just has said and how it might have sounded. Six months ago he could have looked Adam dead in the eyes and told him he wanted to cover his body in truffle oil and lick it off him, and not worried for a second about it sounding even vaguely flirtatious but now, recently, their eyes catch and snag, Tony's face burn because somehow the words seems to mean something, have a potential meaning.

And Adam is here, smiling, dropping his chin and giving Tony a significant look. "A big bed eh?" he murmurs, voice low and rough and Tony is not sure but he thinks even Adams legs are falling open in invitation. His brains short circuits and he spends a horrible moment stuttering and flushing before abruptly saving himself by knocking over his wine glass. In the flutter of saving food and mopping up the wine he doesn't notice Adam getting up and coming around the bar until he lays a soft hand on Tony's sleeve. He stills and Adam backs him a couple of steps away from the kitchen counter. He has one hand gently stroking over Tony's fingers and the other one pulling him in by his elbow. They are very, very close.

"Hello" Adam murmurs, his smile soft as his hand slips from Tony's elbow to rest at his hip inside his jacket. Tony only makes a soft humiliating mewling sound in this throat. Adam cups in neck and is pulling him in, close and warm.

His phone is ringing, it's actually taking him several seconds to recognise it as an actual sound and not a ringing in his ears or his heart giving the alarm. Adam is so close he can feel his breath on his mouth, his body warm and enticing along Tony's front. But his phone is ringing and it hasn't stopped in spite of the eternity he has been ignoring it and he wrests himself away to answer it.

 

Adams nerves feels like they are jangling and he busies himself with the food while Tony is on the phone. He has no idea what just happened, or rather he knows perfectly well that he was five seconds from sticking his tongue down his best and steadiest friends throat and drag him off to bed if he could, he just has no idea how it happened. It was the blush in Tony’s cheeks, the way his dark eyes darted to his and away again, the way the light curved around his shoulder and well, everything really.

"Yes, no," Tony sounds tense on the phone, a stricken dismayed look settling on his face. " _C’est mon pére,_ ” says low to Adam, his hand over the receiver. He turns away.

"No, yes, yes, of course. He transferred last week, there was a murmur, yes he had the full bloodworks and and the scan. Yes, with doctor Singh, yes. Of course, yes, straight away."

He hangs the phone up and runs a hand through his hair, overcome.

"It was the hospital, it’s pappi. He had a cough last week that developed into pneumonia and now... I... I have to go straight away." He looks at Adam and makes a weak gesture towards the table of food, the overturned glass.

"Don't worry, I'll put it all away. You just get to the hospital."

"Yes, the hospital," Tony says and turns around. He remains standing as if not knowing where to go first.

"Do you have your keys, phone, wallet?

Tony nods absently, his hands running restlessly through his hair.

"A toothbrush?"

"I'll go to the bathroom," Tony says slowly, with gratitude and ten minutes later he's ready to go.

"Just close the door behind you, and you don't have to bother with the dishes, and I'll see you in the morning and take home anything you like," he rattles at the door, putting his shoes on, his coat. Adam trails him like a cat.

"Which hospital?" he asks and Tony says the name of some private clinic in the city.

"Don't worry about the restaurant and the hotel, we'll handle everything. Helene and I will get together with Caitlin and Diggory and make sure it runs smoothly." Diggory is the hotel manager Tony's father hired back in the 90’s who probably can keep the Langham running in his sleep. Tony nods and turns to the door, spins around and throws his arms around Adam, hugging him fierce and desperate. He leaves a quick kiss on Adams cheeks when he withdraws, just at the corner of his mouth.  And then he's out the door and gone.

Adam puts away the food and cleans up the kitchen. He loads up the coffee machine so it's just ready to brew, putting a clean coffee cup next to it on the counter. He thinks that might be the extent Tony will allow him to care for him but then goes to Tony's tidy bedroom and packs an overnight bag for him, clean change, a soft towel and a pillowcase from his linen cupboard. On a whim he puts on Tony's day planner, with all his appointments and phone numbers, to give him some semblance of control. He sends the bag by messenger rather than bringing it over himself. It's late and Tony might need some space, rather than overly solicitous but useless, hovering.  The he goes home, puts a casserole into the slow cooker and goes to bed, trying to think of nothing, trying to remember that sobriety is a choice every damn day.

 

 


	4. Chapter 4

The Langham board AGM is an excruciating event, mostly because Adam has to wear a suit and he's not responsible for the food, and it goes on for days. Well, over a weekend anyway. It's in a fancy conference resort in Scotland and mostly it 's people congratulating themselves and waiting for the next meal. Adam feels even more like a performing monkey being paraded around, the rockstar chef, his value to the shares calculated within inches.Tony tends to sit next to him at mealtimes with one hand on his leg (alas not a warm and arousing palm, but a sharp thumb and finger pinched around his knee) whispering things like "Yes I know the pheasant is dry and overcooked, the parsnip cremè is bland and you are _not_ allowed to tell them so." He is also not allowed to poach a very promising under chef, even though he knows for a _fact_ that Tony has slipped his business card to the too-good- for-this-place housekeeper. It's just no fun at all.  And Tony is the most not fun at all of everything.

 

Ever since that night when his father took a turn for the worse Tony has been avoiding him. And that's OK, Adam is all about giving people space in his new reformed life but actually he’s starting to feel like he's got the bubonic plague.

When Tony came back, after a three day vigil at Balerdi Senior's bedside, after managing the restaurant by phone and email, it was surprisingly David who pulled it out of the bag. Tony's pappi managed to pull through, despite the pneumonia and the water in his lungs. He didn't exactly recover but he was as well as he was ever going to get, and everyone at the hotel and the kitchen could feel that first peal of doom, inevitable and cold. Adam found him in the kitchen, in the hour after lunch, David just in and diligently working away with dinner prep and Tony sitting beside him on a high chair cradling a cup of coffee, looking like death warmed over. David just seemed to buffer him that day, creating a calm space around the two of them, even in the worst mayhem of dinner service. And Adam get that, he does truly, whatever is brewing between him and Tony is too fraught to be restful. David and Tony has no history of bad decisions, betrayals and let downs, sometimes you need the comforts that only a stranger can offer. That he could understand it didn’t mean it didn’t sting like hell.

Now Tony avoids his eyes, staring firmly over Adams left ear when talking to him, he moves away from his hands, so subtle that it's hardly noticeable to anyone except Adam, whose fingers are suddenly grasping at air.

 

It's terrible.

 

He had never thought that Tony's unwavering friendship would be withdrawn because he returned his feelings. And he does, it has crept up on him but even Adam is not thick enough to deny it. He might be slightly, helplessly, in love with Tony Baleridi. He has no idea about how to tell him though. The casual _Hey,you know that time when I offered you breakfast instead of my heart? Do you know I've had a bit to think about it and now I've reconsidered and I think I'm in love with you actually?_ , does not have a good ring to it. The matter has been closed between them and Adam has no idea how to approach it, and all his clumsy flirting seems like mockery and only serves to make him feel like a dick. So the AGM is terrible, the food is terrible, Tony is terrible, and all this leads Adam to slump down with his elbows on the bar and tell the pretty bartender "I'm a recovering alcoholic and I can't drink but I've had a hell of a day so can you please mix me a _very strong_ Shirley Temple?"

 

She mixes him the best drink he's ever had with a strong ginger base that stings in his mouth and numbs his lips like really good vodka, and there are notes of velvety burnt vanilla and sweet lime. It's the closest Adam has had to a real drink in years.

"Please don't tell me how much sugar is in this," he says after draining it.

"To be honest, less sugar than actual spirits," she says.

Which is how Adam ends up nose deep in the pressed apple casks and ginger beer experiments that she is brewing under the counter. Tony finds them on the floor, discussing water locks and fermentation.

“Tony!” Adam says overjoyed, “this is Purneeta, her pear- and-ginger ginger beer has changed my life.”

"Oh,I'm glad to hear it,” Tony says, looking anything but glad.

"You have to try it, I think it would go really well with the pigeon biset and that means with some tinkering, we could offer a tailor-made nonalcoholic drinks menu that wouldn’t taste like shit!"

“Alcohol free? Tony asks " _Iesu Christo_ ,” he says with profound relief, “ I thought you were drinking hooch."

He gives Adam a half-hearted nod before turning back and walking out of the bar, his face white and tense, a sucker-punched slump to his shoulders. And Adam understands that while he might have earned Helenes trust, Tony's is imparted not so much day by day, as hour by hour. And even knowing that Adam might break down again at any moment he still has trusted him with so much.His friendship, his heart, his dying father’s reputation. It's humbling and it takes his breath away and all he can do is rush out into the dark corridor to Tony and gently, gently catch him by the hand.

"I’m sorry, Tony," he says. "I'm so sorry."

And suddenly it's easy to fold Tony into his arms, tucking his head under his chin and gently hold him, swaying back and forth.

"I'm so sorry Tone, I promise I got my shit together this time. I do, I do, I do."

And Tony, always so rigid and guarded, hugs back, his strong arms folding around Adams neck and back, a promise holding him in. It feels too public out in the corridor and he knows anybody can walk past, but at the same time, now that he's finally allowed to touch Tony like this he's not sure he could stop. He wants to touch everywhere, his hands rove like they have a mind of their own, over Tony's back, jaw, his hair, his ears, and then heart-stoppingly Tony lifts his face and fumbles for Adams mouth. His nose, the ridge of his brow, the sweep of his eyelashes trail slowly, haltingly along Adams neck, cheek and finally, finally his lips. It's like Adam has forgotten everyone he's ever kissed and even forgotten how to kiss and for a moment they just halt there, like two awkward teenagers who can't quite figure it out, breath lapping at each other and not quite meeting, until Tony surges forward that last millimetres and it all comes back to Adam in a great wave and they are kissing. Tony's mouth is wet and slick, his lips feel cold and his tongue warm. Adam can't believe he gets to do this, little shocks of panic and arousal coursing through him. When they part both of them are panting and speechless. Adam can feel his heart working inside his ribcage like a trip gone wrong. Tony looks afraid too, like he has somehow done the wrong thing, as if Adam hasn't silently begged Tony to kiss him every day for the last month. Adams hand can't stop opening and closing around the back of Tony's neck.

"We should..." he says and Tony nods, short and tight. Adam is not sure who moves first but they are across the hallway and then into the safe, welcoming darkness of a linen closet. Tony’s looking like a trainwreck, he is  always so immaculately put together that this is the first time Adam really has a sense of him as somebody who's struggling to keep all of that in control. There is fear in his eyes and his hands are twitching on Adam, as if he's not sure of holding on or letting go. Adam’s guts feels like a tight dark knot of anxiety or possibly food poisoning and he makes the effort to take a deep breath and slowly reel Tony in hand by hand, walking his hands from Tony's elbows to his shoulders and then around him.

"I don't know what the fuck I'm doing but I want to take you out to dinner, OK?" he whispers over Tony's shoulder into the dark of the cupboard, wrapping his arms around him and holding on. "Or coffee, or cinema or whatever you want, I want to do this right but you've got to help me because I have no idea what I'm doing." It feels fragile, out in the open, entrused to the darkness like the whispery rustling of a moth.

It feels like a confession sucked out from the depth of him and Tony laughs wetly, Adam can't see his face but he suspects there might be tears in his eyes.

"First time at the gay rodeo?" he asks into Adam's neck, only a trace of bitterness in his voice.

"Uh, no,not quite. First time in the relationship rodeo. First time I can't afford to fuck it up."

"Literally and figuratively," Tony supplies helpfully. “You really could not afford it if I fired you.”

His arms have come up around Adam now, holding him firm. It's like they are slow dancing in a cupboard.

"My mom always told me to stay away from office romances. And rich boys."

They separate a little bit, Tony's hands gently resting around Adams neck before he leans over to slowly and deliberately kiss him. It feels like he is putting something to the test. Adam can feel the knot untangle and his anxiety subside. This is Tony, who he knows and trusts. Tony might not do things perfect, but he does them right. He won't let Adam falter.

"Do you want to go upstairs?” he asks when Tony lets him go. “I mean we could stay in here and never come out. We could set up a camping stove for me to cook on and a little fax machine and what else would we need?"

“Nobody uses a fax machine anymore, Adam," Tony says deadpan. " We would need a tiny hand-cranked wifi.”

 

They exit furtively with a conspicuous foot of air between them. The tension in Tony's shoulders and mouth comes back, his top lip puffed out and the bottom lip drawn in tight. It takes an effort not to touch him and Adam is grateful for the white-out of arousal drowning out his near blinding panic. All of Adams life have been a river that's always carried him away and dashed him against the rocks, and it's only lately that he has learned to ride the current and choose the calmer waters, but for one moment he is horribly afraid. What if this is the rapids again? Throwing him in and tossing him around, leaving him bruised and battered and out of control? What is this is just his addiction rearing its ugly head again, making his closest friendship into something it isn't? What if he seduces Tony, and starts this new phase of their relationship and then grows bored within a week? Adam has never had anything good in his life that he hasn't tried, and managed, to break.

 

Tony hesitates outside his door, fiddling with the key card.

"You look like you want to vomit," Tony says, sort of kindly.  "Adam," he pauses, looks up at the ceiling, collects himself, "this is, um, this my heart on the line here. This is not because you think you owe me. I know what I said, that I had accepted that you... and I have, you can't just fuck around with that because you think..." he trails off, words too difficult but Adam gets him.There is a _lot_ of debt between them, and technically Tony actually employs him but this, the love that has trickled out of him without his even noticing, feels simple. It feels obvious, go on some dates, make out a lot, have sex and in twenty years from now when Adam is pushing sixty, there Tony will be, with him, like he should be, stick up his ass, blow-dried hair and all. Adam is not fucking around.

“Do you, um, still want to come in?” Tony ask, a hand on the door and Adam knows he probably shouldn’t. They should have a long talk, he should voice his emotions. He should go to his own bed and sleep alone, not be rash.

“Yeah,” he said softly “I’d really like to.”

Stepping into Tony's room feels monumental. Adam has had sex with men before, scattered among the many bad decisions in Paris, and even once stone-cold sober in Louisiana, but this feels different than all of them. The once in New Orleans had been with his heart hammering an anxious stackato against his ribcage and he had ducked out as soon as it was over, unable to deny that it little to do with attraction but that it had been an exercise, to prove it to himself finally.

They stand quiet inside the door until Tony shifts, shrugs.

“You are looking at me,” Tony says, self consciously rubbing a finger over the tip of his nose.

“Of course I’m looking,” Adam smile. “I like looking at you.”

“Adam, I think at this stage flattery is just an unnecessary courtesy,” Tony said turning his face away and Adam kissed his cheek, just at the corner of his mouth. “I am what you would call “a sure thing”.”

The remark stings but Adam lets it pass, they can deal with it later.

“I’m not trying to flatter you, I’m trying out this new thing where I’m not an asshole all the time.”

“I liked you when you were an asshole,” Tony points out but the smile has crept back on his face.

“I promise, you’re going to like me so much better now,” Adam breathes and dived in.

 

Tony is a slim form in his arms, his hair smooth and the ends crisp, warm where it was cut short at the nape of his neck. He was too well dressed; everytime Adam put his hand out to touch he was met by the defensive shell of the suit, until finally Tony ducked out of his arms and took the jacket off. He took the tie off too, dark blue silk with lighter diagonal stripes, and Adam reflected idly that he would look good with a pop of color, maybe even a pink tie. He could always try it for Christmas. It was also, he realized with a rush, the most undressed he’d seen Tony since they roomed together, and even then the most he’d ever seen of Tony was in sweats and a dressing gown, like the world’s most uptight Hugh Hefner. Now he was suddenly soft, his hair was starting to come undone from the hold of pomade, the top button of his shirt was undone, and it made Adam weak in the knees. The look he gave Adam was at once embarrassed and heated, his brown eyes like melted sugar. He was, for a second, warm and pliant in Adam’s arms before he kissed him back and put his hands on him.

 

Stripping Tony from his clothes is like unwinding layers and layers of defenses and finding a person underneath. He seems to Adam’s eyes surprisingly young, essentially unchanged from that young man in Jean-Luc’s kitchen. Adam has a second of strange, giddy relief when Tony finally takes his shirt off and the thought “Oh shit he’s hot, came unbidden into Adam’s head. Taking his own shirt off Adam is vividly reminded of the last time he had been naked in front of Tony, shamelessly using it to force a confrontation they never should have had. But maybe he had just wanted to hear Tony admit it. He feels, of course, a bit stupid about it now, not everything is possible, unless you count the fact that Adam is naturally easy.

 

Tony grows more confident, bolder, his hands skating over Adams shoulders his chest, at first in large careful sweeps and then more intimate, rougher, more demanding. They are swaying and panting now, Tony licks into his mouth and Adam opens up wide, lets himself fall back into the bed. The world feels blurred, the edges of everything smeared and soft and in the end there is only this, there is only them. Tony’s breathing, the little hitching sound he keeps making when Adam touches him just so, his strong and warm body and his hard on against Adam’s hip. He has fought this for so long, tried not to imagine the rasp of stubble, the strong sinewy arms and flat chest and now he’s here and he can’t find it in himself to be afraid, only grateful that he has finally come to this place and that its Tony here with him. He comes messily all over Tony’s hip and hand, desperately rubbing his whole body against him and shuddering in the bright all encompassing wave of sensation. Tony comes a little after, quietly choked against Adam’s shoulder, his nails digging into Adam’s arm.

 

After sex is one of the times when Adam’s busy brain finally stills and becomes quiet. The world folds in on itself and becomes simple; its easy to hustle Tony out of the bed and  into the shower, easy to answer Tony’s sleepy question of: you staying? with an affirmative noise and crawl into the bed with him, already pressing his face into that spot between the shoulder blades where it fits to well.

 

Adam wakes up disoriented and way too warm in the pitch dark of night by Tony jabbing him in the side with a sharp elbow.

“ _Sheisse erdrosselnd shlange, verfickte acht-armenden tintenfisch_ ,” he murmurs grumpily,, not even properly awake, ineffectually batting at Adam’s hands. Adam rolls away from him and falls asleep again, the night closing over him like warm water.

 

***

  
  
The sound of driving rain is what wakes Tony up. It’s pouring down over the scenic Scottish landscape, blanketing the view in a dreary grey. Adam is still asleep next to him, one hand stretched out and loosely curled around Tony’s bicep, the calluses and cuts rough against his skin. It’s the morning after and Tony mostly feels apprehensive.He’s not sure if Adam actually remembers it, but they have kissed once or twice before. A little drunk Adam inclined to be tactile and comfort seeking, with no exception for kissing. Adam landed a wet smacker on him and Max at a birthday party, a thank you for an inscribed knife, another one at a friends going away party. Tony even kissed him himself working during the New Years, leaning over the pass to to give him an ostentatious smooch just at the stroke of midnight, so even if Adam wants to think so that kiss after the Faux-Michelin men was hardly a pivotal moment.

 

And yet this is. Adam in his bed, swaying and panting, is new.  Adams hands and his blue eyes and his mouth soft and wanting. It's all new. Tony can feel his heart squeeze in his chest, fearful and easily bruised. He never imagined the strength, or how Adam would gasp and buck when squeezing his ass. He feels tired, he can’t manage another go-around on the Adam disaster carousel, and he feels very aware of the fact that he might be the one drinking G&T’s after this, with nobody there to pick up the broken pieces.

 

For Adam cooking was not really an expression of love, it was a display of skill, about his own interest in the process and less about the recipient on the other side. All of which Tony had known when he turned down Adam’s offer of cooking him breakfast, gently letting him know that he wanted all of Adam, not just Adam in any way he could have him. And now, he wonders just how much he will have when all of this is over.

 

When he stirs Adam’s eyes crack open, they are not natural early risers but a lifetime in the restaurant business has trained them.

“Whats the time?” he whispers, voice hoarse.

Tony’s wristwatch is just 5.30, early enough for other people to be sleeping. Adam sits up rubs his eyes.

“I should go,” he says and Tony feels cold, watching him collect his clothes, and it’s a shock when Adam, in between putting on his jeans and pulling the t-shirt over his head, leans over to press a kiss to his lips. His lips feel soft and the stubble unbearably bristly.

“I’ll see you on the train,” Adam says and then winks at him. “You’ll save me a seat, right?”

He helplessly  trails Adam all the way to the door, all unspoken questions crowding on his tongue. What is this, what has happened, what has changed? Before he ducks out of the door Adam pauses, his hand latching warm around Tony’s neck and kissing him, slow and melting until all of Tony’s nerve endings feel like they are on fire and not a single thought left in his head. He feels dazed and strangely light when Adam finally lets him go, like a balloon ready to slip it’s string, like he’s shed something he wasn’t even aware that he was carrying. He looks straight at Adam, at his blue, blue eyes and he knows he is the thing he loves most in the world.

“I don’t have a fucking clue what I’m doing either,” he says, before he can change his mind. If Adam is looking to him to be the one with the responsible emotions he might as well tell him right now and rip his heart clean out, but instead Adam smiles, the big smile like a sunrise, like a perfect dish.

"I meant what I said,” he says sincerely. “I want to do this right. Coffee dates, pet names, the whole nine yards, but we don't have to do all of it at once. We can figure it out a little at the time.”

Tony nods, quite relieved.

“Like a new recipe,” he says and Adam smiles even wider.

“Yeah,” he agrees “Like a new recipe, trial and error.”

And Tony nods back at him, feeling like something has cracked in his chest, a seed sprouting its first green tendril of tentative happiness.

 

 

They sit opposite each other on the train down to London, the journey conducted in professional silence, Tony engrossed in work and Adam reading a paperback. After a couple of hours Adam unfolds his long legs and his foot sneaks up to rest against Tony's until their calves are snugly and warmly resting against each other under the table. It's discreet and yet Tony can feel the colour rising in is cheeks and there is a satisfied smile lurking on Adams face.

  
  
***

 

Staff meetings are every Tuesday at 7 sharp, because Tony is a sadist who don’t see the point in wasting good daylight when they are all awake anyway. Attendance is pretty low, just Tony, Caitlin, Adam, Helene, Max and sometimes Gill or Pippa from the hotel, and Diggory too if they have anything larger that needs to be coordinated between them. Autumn is coming on, with the great slog ahead that is Christmas and New Years, most of the wheels are already in motion, staff hires, menu, the headache that is holiday leave (to which Adam suggested the Gordian solution of not giving anybody any time off, and Tony suggested that September was too early to be the Grinch). There is a big charity dinner for the Saatchi gallery coming up and the menu has not yet been fixed. Diggory has said  when conferring for the booking that there was a suggestion for maybe some sort of food bowl, and Adam has asked him in return to convey the suggestion that maybe they could go fuck themselves so things are currently at a stalemate. When Tony brings it up everybody at the table groans and rolls their eyes and he scowls at them.

“Adam, Helene, you and I can sit down and iron this one out. I need three mains suggestions, one vegetarian, two starters and a dessert. We can do it at Thursday afternoon at….” his pen hovers over an empty spot in his day planner when Adam pipes up

“Uh, actually, Tony we can’t Thursday, um, you and I have a d..a... a thing, remember?”

“We have _“a thing”?”_ Tony says with the voice of somebody who’s never in their whole life has had “a thing.”

“Yeah,” Adam says coloring, “The thing, remember?”

“What thing?” Tony asks and Adam makes a face and his eyes widen in recollection.

“Oh, yes! The thing! Um, yeah we do have a thing. Its um, a... whole deal,” he makes a little spinning motion with his fingers. “And it’s on Thursday too.”

Helene just sighs and rubs her face, “So if Thursday is out, does that mean we have to do it early on Saturday instead?”

Barring extra work or special circumstances Helene have Saturdays up until dinner service off, in an effort to keep Lily from casually referring to Adam as The Ogre. It has had a mixed success to say the best.

“We can probably get it in early on Thursday instead, before lunch service” Adam says.

“But not in the afternoon, because we have a thing, or rather Adam has a thing, and I have another separate thing which is not connected, so we are both away doing things, but not together,” Tony says.

“You two are mental,” Helene says and for a second Tony’s dark eyes flicks to Adam’s and a minute smile thins his lips before he looks down and clicks his pen, all cool professionalism.

“Then, next point, we have a new lease with the council regarding rubbish collections and that will mean…….”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The German is almost certainly wrong, but who among us has correct German at three in the morning?


	5. Epilogue

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know I said four chapters but it needed and epilogue.

Adam has clawed out Thursdays between lunch and dinner service as his time off, as well as Monday mornings before lunch. Depressingly it 's usually the time he goes to the laundromat and sits and stares at his boxers slowly revolving around the drum, reflecting over how low the mighty has fallen that he is now doing laundry regularly. Only this Thursday he manages to duck out 10 minutes early, chucking his leather jacket over a reasonably fresh t-shirt and hoping that Tony is into the four day stubble he’s rocking. After all both grooming and laundry had to be sacrificed in order to actually get the time off.

After much deliberation they had decided on a coffee date, because Adam was not going to use his two hours off to sit in the dark in a cinema, and Tony was not about to go within twenty feet of a restaurant together with Adam (I want to relax, not have a nervous breakdown or get involved in a brawl). They are keeping it quiet from the rest of the staff at the restaurant too, partially because its too much strain to tell everybody and partially because it’s fun to sneak around. Adam thinks the last time he went on a real date might have been in junior high, if you count awkwardly making out behind the school gym. He jogs across Waterloo bridge towards the north embankment, it has started to rain a fine mist and Tony’s  umbrella is already coated with a fine silver sheen. They don’t kiss but Adam, using the rain as an excuse, threads his arm through Tony’s, allowing them to share the umbrella.

“I can’t believe you, after chasing me all of these years, still forgot about our first date. I knew the magic would be gone as soon as I put out.”

“Well, Adam you _are_ not as pretty as you once were. Maybe if you hadn’t let yourself go I would still be interested.” Adam scoffs and pretends to be offended, pretends that his whole body has not molded itself into Tony’s side and that the smell of him, the sight of him, is making him lighteaded.

“Where’re we going?” he asks and Tony smiles.

“You’ll like it, the coffee is good and the baker is my secret supplier of nata pastries in London. You are not allowed to yell at anyone.”

“I'll do my best.” Adam promises and tips his head to Tony’s for a split second, before they walk off. And there they are, old friends in the rain, both safe and sound and Adam thinks it’s a miracle that all his wrong decisions have led him to this place, to this person. Being happy is a new and foreign emotion to Adam but he thinks he might get used to it with practice. He plans to get a lot of practice.

  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> \- FIN-
> 
> Thank you so much to everyone who has left kudos or a comment, it's everything.


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